language, reason, and sociability
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of whether animals have souls, while the subject of intense debate ever since Descartes
claim that they did not and were mere machines5, was no longer relevant for Herder, who
accepted that they did (along with Rousseau and Condillac).6 The animal-human distinction
now centred rather on how to conceive what was distinctive about the human soul, given that
animals shared many of the same faculties, such as sensation, imagination, and
representation. For Herder, as we shall see, it was the different organization of the souls
forces in animals and humans that accounted for the distinction, an organization apparent
from the very beginning of human development. Herder opposed his conception of the
distinction to one which claimed it consisted in the human soul possessing additionalforces
or capacities that could remain dormant or in a state of potentiality until triggered into
activity. This was the conception Herder associated with Rousseau and Condillac.
Condillacs account, which Rousseau followed7, of how language, and with it reflection,
might have arisen by natural means (as opposed to the official account of divine
instruction), imagines two post-diluvian children in a desert whose mutual discourse leads
them to connect the naturally spontaneous cries of passion and feeling with the perceptions
associated with them, e.g., a piece of fruit out of reach, the encounter of a dangerous animal,
etc., and then to begin to use them with intention as instituted signs.8
Herder fundamentally
disagreed with this account and had to show why it was mistaken before he could present his
own.
Herders disagreement was not, however, wholesale. It was premised on a distinction
between a language that humans shared with animals and a language that was specifically
humanand Condillacs cry of passion had everything to do with the former and nothing to
do with the latter. The very opening of Herders Treatise sets the scene: Already as an
animal, the human being has language.9 That language is the language of feeling, which
consists in the need that humans and animals both share to express intense or painful bodily
5For discussion, see Jean-Luc Guichet,Rousseau, lanimal et lhomme. Lanimalit dans lhorizon
anthropologique des Lumires (Paris: Cerf, 2006), 25-111 and Neis,Anthropologie, 195-231.6
See Condillac,Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, ed. Hans Aarsleff (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001), 39; hereafterEssay. Unlike Condillac, who argued against Buffon for their existence,Rousseaus belief in animal souls, like Herders, is simply assumed; see, e.g., Rousseau,Lettres morales, inuvres compltes, vol. IV, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 1098. Fordiscussion see Guichet,Rousseau, lanimal et lhomme, 129-70 and Victor Goldschmidt,Anthropologie et
politique. Les principes du systme de Rousseau (Paris: Vrin, 1983), 273-88.7
Rousseau,Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings,ed.Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 145ff.; hereafterDiscourse.8
Condillac,Essay, 113-15.9
Herder, Treatise on the Origin of Language, inJohann Gottfried von Herder: Philosophical Writings, ed.Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65. Modifications of this translation are
based on the German text in Gaier,Frhe Schriften. HereafterTreatise.
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sensations or strong passions in cries, tones, in wild unarticulated sounds.10 Herder
immediately situates this language of feeling within a conception of a natura operativa or
wrkende Natur (active nature). Nature, he says, has hardly made us to be egoistic
monads, referring to his belief in the naturalness of interaction and communication among
animals and humans, but also playing on his rejection of Leibnizian pre-established harmony
and concomitant acceptance of soul-body interaction.11 Rather, nature has connected
creatures with one another via a natural law according to which vivid sensations must be
vocalized. These groans, these tones are language. Hence there is a language of sensation
which is an immediate law of nature.12 This law operates on a physiological level, at the
level of the nervous structure of organisms, in a manner Herder regrets is still too
inadequately understood. The metaphor he employs to illustrate how this language works is
of musical strings: the finest cords of animal feelings necessarily produce sounds that arouse
a sympathetic feeling in creatures of the same species, who are similarly delicately strung
(zartbesaitet), without any conscious intention to do so on the part of the vocalizing
creature.13 Evolving out of this, each animal species has its own more developed language of
feeling which Herder calls a language of a people or Vlkersprache, through which they
communicate in their own limited manner.14
Human beings, too, have such a language whose
sounds Herder associates with interjections we still use meaningfully, such as Ah! (melting
love or sinking despair) and Oh! (sudden joy or impetuous fury).15
The sounds of this language, however, are not where the origin of the language of
words is to be found. They are not the actual roots, but the juices which enliven the roots of
language.16 Beyond its function as a source and means of affective connection between
creatures, the language of feeling is an important precursor to the emergence of the language
of words, or what Herder calls human language. The very act of vocalizing strong
sensations or passions serves to develop and train the physiological infrastructure that spoken
human language will utilize and provides it with its sonic raw materials.17 But even before
the emergence of spoken language, the language of feeling lays groundwork for the true
origin of human language (which, as we shall see, is not originally spoken language), and it is
10Ibid.
11See Herder, ber Leibnitzens Grundstze von der Natur und Gnade, inHerder und die Anthropologie, ed.
Pross, 49-51. For discussion, see DeSouza, Leibniz in the eighteenth century.12
Herder, Treatise, 66.13
Ibid., 65, 66.14
Ibid., 67.15
Ibid.16Ibid., 68.
17Ibid., 69.
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here that Herder parts company with Condillac and Rousseau and all other previous language
theorists. In order to see how, we need first to return to Condillacs theory. In his Treatise,
Herder targets what he sees as the fatal weakness of Condillacs theory: how do the two
children in the desert make that jump from spontaneously emitting cries of feelings to using
them with intention, from the unconscious use of natural signs to the conscious use of
instituted ones?18 Condillac had himself recognized, and admitted in letters to Pierre Louis
Moreau de Maupertuis19
and Gabriel Cramer, that his theory was inadequate, saying he had
given too much to signs and not enough to the role of social interaction (commerce). In one
such letter to Cramer, he writes: [t]his commerce provides the occasion 1) to change natural
cries into signs, 2) to invent other signs which we call arbitrary; and these signs (the natural
as much as the arbitrary) are the first principle of the development and progress of the
operations of the soul.20 This admission, however, did nothing to rectify the problem, as
Herder saw it. For the question of precisely how arbitrary/instituted signs begin to be used is
not answered by asserting that interaction provides the occasion to do so.
Language and Sphere
The linchpin in Herders theory of the origin of language is his alternative explanation
of how instituted signs, or their equivalent, arise. And the starting point for Herder is the
difference between the soul-forces (Seelenkrfte) of animals and humans. Animals closer to
us in nature have many of the same faculties, such as sensation, imagination, and
representation. But whereas we have a further capacity for reason and language, animals are
confined to instinct. This formulation, however, is problematic; for the error of Condillac and
Rousseau, in Herders eyes, lies in construing reason and language as just thisa further
capacity that is added to the capacities we share with animals and that requires other
arbitrary or social forces to develop.21 Herder resolutely rejected the faculty psychology of
his day, which divided the soul into imagination, understanding, representation, reflection,
etc. These divisions are made for our own convenience, he insists, given our inability to
perceive the faculties simultaneously; in reality, the whole undivided soul operates
(wrkt).22 Herders claim is that reason and language are the product of a qualitative, not
18Ibid., 75.
19uvres philosophiques de Condillac, ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947-51),
vol. 2, 563.20
Condillac,Lettres indites Gabriel Cramer, ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1953), undated letter but after 1750, 86.21Herder, Treatise, 81-2 (translation modified).
22Ibid., 83 (translation modified), 134.
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quantitative, difference in human soul-forces, as compared with those of an animal. He
unpacks the nature of this difference through some critical reflections on Hermann Samuel
Reimarus General Observations on the Instincts of Animals, Chiefly on Their Instincts to Art
(1760). Reimarus distinguishes between mechanical instincts, representational instincts,
instincts of affect, and instincts to art. The first refer to the basic operations of the body, such
as breathing and circulation. Representational instincts depend on the sense organs, nervous
system, and brain and involve perception and sensation. Instincts of affect concern the
passions, such as pleasure and aversion. Finally, instincts to art involve what normally goes
under the name instinct, i.e., animals innate skills in securing food, building a home, etc.23
Reimarus claims that humans and animals share the first three, but that only animals have
instincts to art. Humans may possess some form of these (such as suckling as an infant), but
they mostly lack them. Reimarus also maintains that there is no further explanation for
animals innate instincts to art, which they follow blindly, than the will of God who endowed
animals with these basic forces (Grundkrfte).24
Herder takes issue with this latter claim of Reimarus, arguing that to assume blind
determinations destroys all philosophy.25 Instead he creatively utilizes elements from
Reimarus own theory to provide a more satisfactory explanation of the presence of instincts
to art in animals and their absence in human beings. To be sure, Herder does not dispute that
animals (and humans) owe their endowment of basic forces to God; rather, he wishes to
provide a naturalistic understanding of just how those forces develop.26
In a word, Herder
draws a connection of dependence between the representational instincts of animals and their
instincts to art: it is possible to explain all drives to and abilities for art from animals
forces of representation.27 The key to understanding this connection is the concept of the
sphere of an animal, which Herder most likely also takes from Reimarus.28 Every animal has
23
Reimarus,Allgemeine Betrachtungen ber die Triebe der Thiere, hauptschlich ber ihre Kunsttriebe(Hamburg: Johann Carl Bohn, 1760), 1ff., 16ff., 73ff., 87ff.24
Ibid., 69-70, 365, 373.25
Herder, Treatise, 79. Moses Mendelssohn made this very point in his 1761 review of Reimarus book, arguingthat Reimarus needed to show how instinct could be explained through the nature of the animal soul. See
Literaturbriefe, 130. Brief,in Moses Mendelssohns gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. B. Mendelssohn (Leipzig:Brockhaus, 1844) vol. 4, part II, 184-85. Reimarus responded to Mendelssohns criticisms in a second edition in
1762 in a long appendix, but curiously still maintained, repeatedly, that animal instinct must be eine blindlings
determinirte Neigung zu einer gewissen Wirksamkeit. He acknowledged that Mendelssohn criticized him for
giving no further ground for the exact determination of these forces but replied that if clear experiences and
correct conclusions show the determination of natural forces are original and essential, then a philosopher is
entitled to claim there can be no further ground, except the will of God. SeeAnhang von der verschiedenenDetermination der Naturkrfte, inAllgemeine Betrachtungen (Hamburg: Johann Carl Bohn, 1762), 29, 61-2.26
My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to be clearer on this point.27Ibid.
28Ibid., 78; Reimarus,Allgemeine Betrachtungen (1760),382.
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a sphere or circle (Herder uses these synonymously) which it is born into and remains in for
its whole life. There exists, Herder claims, an inverse proportion between the extent of this
sphere and the degree to which a creature is governed by instinct. This degree is in turn
directly rooted in the representational range of the animals soul-forces.
When infinitely fine senses are confined to a small circle, to uniformity, and thewhole remaining world is nothing for them, how they must penetrate! When forces of
representation are confined to a small circle and endowed with an analogous
sensuality, what effect they must have! And finally, when senses and representations
are directed at a single point, what else can become of this but instinct?29
Herder also draws a connection between the size of an animals sphere and the extent of its
language (and here he moves beyond Reimarus): the smaller the sphere, the less extensive the
language. For besides the language of feelingthe sounding forth of the sensitive
machine30 Herder attributes to each animal species an animal language which is
appropriate for its sphere of needs and types of work, for the organization of its senses, for
the direction of its representations, and for the strength of its desires.31
In the background of
this discussion is Leibniz-Wolffian epistemology and the spectrum of ideas ranging from
obscure and confused to clear and distinct. Animal species demonstrate an obscure,
sensuous common-understanding among its members about its destiny in the circle of its
efficacy (Wrkung).32 Animals are confined to some kind of limited sphere and their
languages are correspondingly more or less obscure, but always only obscure.33
This proportionality between sphere and language seems to disappear in the case of
humans for the simple reason, Herder observes, that the human being has no language that is
as instinctive to it as those of each animal species.34 The reason is to be found in the
fundamental difference between the human sphere and all animal spheres.
The human being has no such uniform and narrow sphere where only a single sort of
work awaits him; a world of occupations and destinies surrounds him. His senses and
organization are not sharpened for a single thing; he has senses for everything and
hence naturally for each particular thing weaker and duller senses. His forces aredistributed over the world; [there is] no direction of his representations towards a
single thing; hence no drive to art, no skill for art and, one thing which is moreespecially relevant here, no animal language.35
29Herder, Treatise, 79.
30Ibid.
31Ibid., 80. This animal language is most likely the Vlkersprache Herder describes earlier.
32Ibid., 79.
33Ibid., 80.
34Ibid.
35
Ibid., 79. Cf. Astrid Gesche,Johann Gottfried Herder: Sprache und die Natur des Menschen (Wrzburg:Knigshausen und Neumann, 1993),117-25. Gesche recognizes the centrality of Herders critique of Reimarus
and the intimate connection between language and sphere, and hence the inadequacy of animal language for
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The result is that a newly born child is in a state of seeming helplessness. Invoking the image
of misericordia so central to the modern natural law tradition, Herder bemoans the
predicament of this naked and bare, weak and needy, timid and unarmed [] most orphaned
child of nature.36 Rousseau, of course, vehemently argues against this portrayal in Part I of
hisDiscourse on the Origin of Inequality. Herder, too, rejects itNo! Such a contradiction
is not natures way of organizing her household!and his reasons for doing so will become
the basis of his critique of Rousseau.
The Origin ofHuman Language
Given the indeterminacy of the human sphere, a language is needed which sorts
through the infinite wealth of data that flood the individuals senses. No animallanguage will
do, because these are oriented towards senses already focussed within a limited sphere.
Rather, the key to this language is found in the source of the indeterminacy: the soul-forces of
the human being are organized differently from the soul-forces in animals. Instinct results
from the determinate organization of these forces, which entails that of the senses and
representations too.37 The lack of determinate organization in human soul-forces translates
into human freedom: no longer an infallible machine in the hands of nature, he becomes his
own end and goal of refinement.38
But to realize this end/goal, the free-standing human
being, deprived of instinct, requires a way to bring order to the sensations it receives from the
surrounding world. And it is the very organization of soul-forces responsible for human
freedom that also gives rise to a state only humans possess, constituting natures
compensation for their lack of instinct: the state of reflective awareness orBesonnenheit.39
This state will eventually lead to actual reflection (Besinnung) and language. Herders
originality, however, consists in postulating a two-stage approach. What defines the state of
reflective awareness is its active presence from the outset.
40
Just as an animals determinedsoul-forces are expressed as instinct from the very beginning, the undetermined nature of
human soul-forces manifests itself as reflective awareness from the start. The flooding of the
human beings, but does not go on to show precisely how human language meets this adequacy requirement and
is commensurate with the human sphere. We turn to this question in the next paragraph.36
Ibid. 80. We return to the image ofmisericordia and the modern natural law tradition below in the discussionof Part II of the Treatise.37
Ibid., 82.38
Ibid.39
Ibid., 84. Wolfgang Pross links Herders avoidance of the more obvious German term,Aufmerksamkeit, in
part to the latters association in the work of Johann Georg Sulzer with a separate faculty of the soul, whichHerder rejected. See Pross, Kommentar (1987), 955-56.40
Ibid., 85.
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senses by the external world immediately activates the individualssensorium commune (i.e.,
the inner sense which is common to all senses), for the various senses are merely forms of
representation of the undivided soul.41 The soul is now in a state of reflective awareness,
ready for the trigger that will begin the process of language formation and actual reflection.
That trigger is the act of the soul picking out a characteristic mark orMerkmalfrom
the flood of sensations.
The human being demonstrates reflection when the force of his soul operates so freely
that in the whole ocean of sensations which floods the soul through all the senses it
can, so to speak, separate off, stop, and pay attention to a single wave, and be
conscious of its own attentiveness.42
This characteristic mark picked out by the soul is simultaneously the first act of reflection and
the first word of the soul. Characteristic marks can be picked out in sensations of all kinds, but it is the sense of hearing which provides the first. Herders example is that of
Mendelssohns in his critical reflections on Rousseaus discussion of language in the
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: a bleating lamb.43 No particular characteristics
depicted to the individuals senses by the lamb passing before him stand outit is white,
soft, fuzzybut his soul searches for one and finds it as soon as the lamb bleats. The sense of
hearing, the middle sense between touch and sight, is the key to language, as Herder later
argues in detail.44
The bleat is both a distinct concept and what Herder calls an inward
characteristic word (innerliches Merkwort) according to which the individual will recognize
the lamb the next time it passes before him (Aha! You are the bleating one!).45
The key
here is that this language is entirely internal. For Herder, the genuine origin of language must
be sought in the capacities of the human soul itself: a human being in the state of reflective
awareness and whose soul is flooded with sensations cannot but begin to pick out
characteristic marks as a means of ordering and making sense of those sensations. Via the
sensorium commune, which operates by a kind of synaesthesia, the soul also learns to pick
out characteristic marks relating to the other senses, and an inner language of characteristic
marks slowly develops.46
This language is the only kind commensurate with the human
sphere; it is fundamentally different from any animal language involving neither distinct
41Ibid., 106-07.
42Ibid., 87.
43Mendelssohn, Sendschreiben and den Herrn Magister Lessing in Leipzig, in Gesammelte Schriften
Jubilumsausgabe, ed. Fritz Bamberger et al. (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromman Verlag, 1972), vol. 2, 107-08.44
Herder, Treatise, 97ff.45Ibid., 88.
46Ibid., 106-08, 133.
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ideas nor conscious awareness of them, but rather only obscure ideas of which the animal is
not consciously aware.
Eventually, this language will start to become spoken languagethe innerMerkwort
for the individual becomes a Mitteilungswortor communication word for othersand this
process will draw on the acoustic infrastructural groundwork already laid down by the
language of feeling with its cries and interjections.47 The central point Herder wants to make,
however, is that the emergence of spoken language does not represent the true origin of
language. And it is this, he believes, that refutes Condillac and Rousseau, as well as Smilch
(who argued for a divine origin of language), all of whom were caught in the circle in which
reason is seen as essential to speech and speech as essential to reason. Ratio et Oratio! If no
reason was possible for the human being without language, good! then the invention of the
latter is as natural, as old, as original, as characteristic for the human being as the use of the
former.48 Inner language precedes and is the necessary condition for spoken language, and
the use of reason begins with the first word of that inner language. For Herder, this process
was self-evident. If others found it unintelligible how a human soul was able to invent
language, then it is unintelligible to me how a human soul was able to be what it is without
precisely thereby, already even in the absence of a mouth and society , inevitably inventing
language for itself.49
The Critique ofrflexion en puissance
Rousseau was one of those others who found it unintelligible that a human soul
could invent language, and Herder certainly had him in mind. In fact, it is to Rousseau that
Herder turns after presenting his notion of reflective awareness in order to demonstrate how it
undermines Rousseaus notion of the potential for reason or rflexion en puissance, as
Herder calls it. Part of Rousseaus strategy for defending his thesis of the natural goodness of
man in the state of nature (as opposed to the wickedness he acquires in society), where he led
an independent and self-sufficient existence, was to show how unnatural language, reason,
and sociability were to him. For it was clear to Rousseau both that language, reason, and
sociability were intimately connected and that they were the foundation of society. In the
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau follows Condillac in maintaining that
47
Ibid., 97.48Ibid., 91.
49Ibid., 90.
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language (i.e., spoken language) and society are mutually necessary.50 Rousseau then
describes just how difficult it would still have been, once language is invented, for a common
language to become establisheddifficulties which demonstrate the virtual impossibility
that Languages could have arisen and been established by purely human means. 51 He then
reiterates the related problem of breaking out of the circle of ratio et oratio that Herder
identifies and concludes:
Whatever may be the case regarding these origins, it is at least clear, from how little
care Nature has taken to bring Men together through mutual needs and to facilitate
their use of speech, how little it prepared their Sociability, and how little of its own it
has contributed to all that men have done to establish its bonds.52
Although deprived of language, reason, or society, Rousseaus savage man is not thereby left
in a state of helplessness. Rousseau agrees with Herder that what distinguishes humans fromanimals is their freedom. While both animals and humans have senses and ideas, the human
being is able to acquiesce to or resist Natures command, which is issued via these ideas,
whereas animals are not, and it is mainly in the consciousness of this freedom that the
spirituality of his soul exhibits itself.53 But this freedom only fully emerges with the
development of reason and language; in the state of nature, savage man is unaware of it and
is in many ways no different from the animals around him. He begins with purely animal
functions and, like animals, [i]n instinct alone he had all he needed to live in the state of
Nature.54 Concerned only with his physical self-preservation, Rousseau portrays his savage
as sating his hunger beneath an oak, slaking his thirst at the first stream, finding his bed at
the foot of the same tree that supplied his meal, and with that his needs are satisfied.55
Far
from needing reason and language, therefore, it is in fact thanks to a very wise Providence
that the faculties he had in potential were to develop only with the opportunities to exercise
them.56 These opportunities would come only later, engendered by entirely contingent
foreign causeshighlighting the lack of necessity, but not inevitability57, of the
development of these faculties.58
50Rousseau,Discourse, 145. Cf. also 194, 207.
51Ibid., 145ff.,149.
52Ibid., 149.
53Ibid., 141.
54Ibid., 142, 150.
55Ibid., 134.
56Ibid., 150.
57For discussion, see Goldschmidt,Anthropologie et politique, 236-38.
58Ibid., 159, 139. In theEssay on the Origin of Languages, Rousseau writes: Human associations are in large
measure the work of accidents of nature; local floods, overflowing seas, volcanic eruptions, major earthquakes,fires started by lightning and destroying forests, everything that must have frightened and dispersed the savage
inhabitants of a land must afterwards have brought them back together to restore in common their common
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The heart of Herders disagreement with Rousseau concerns the idea that human
reason could exist en puissance, as a potential, and thus be initially dormant. Herder
recognizes that his own notion of reflective awareness, which is not yet reason or reflection,
might seem rather close to Rousseaus idea of potential faculties.59 His response is to argue
that Rousseaus rflexion en puissance sees reason as being suddenly transformed into
actuality entirely in virtue of its first use and that this is nonsensical since, if the power is not
present already, it cannot be used and applied.60
The background to this claim are Herders
related Leibnizian beliefs that: nature makes no jumps61
, a faculty cannot therefore suddenly
spring into action62, and what is less noticeable is not therefore nonexistent63. On Herders
reading, Rousseau is implying that because the faculty of reason is not apparent in savage
man, it is therefore entirely dormant and effectively non-existent, whereas for Herder it is
rather only at an earlier, less noticeable stage of development. Herder posits reflective
awareness as a preliminary stage of the soul, before it invents inner language. Reflective
awareness is a product of the different organization of human soul-forces and is present from
the outset. While it is not fully-formed reason (Vernunft), it is the indispensable precondition
for the emergence of reason and amounts to what Herder calls Vernunftmigkeit or
rationality, which is another way of representing the difference between reflection
(Besinnung) and reflective awareness (Besonnenheit).64 Considering the objection that
possessing rationality must mean possessing mature reason, Herder asks,
Does, then, thinking rationally mean thinking with developedreason? Does the claimthat the infant thinks with awareness mean that he rationalizes like a sophist on his
rostrum or the statesman in his cabinet? [] But do they not, then, see that thisobjection merely denies [] a more or less cultivated use of the forces of the soul,and not at all the positive fact of a force of the soul itself? And what fool will claimthat the human being in the first moment of life thinks in the same way after many
losses, in The Discourses, ed. Gourevitch, 274. See alsoFragments politiques, in uvres compltes, ed.Gagnebin and Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), vol. III, 533. It is worth noting that Rousseaus Essay waspublished only posthumously in 1781, over ten years after Herder wrote his Treatise.59
Herder, Treatise, 86.60
Ibid., 85-6.61
Nothing happens at all at once; nature never makes a jump. Always from small to large See Herder,
Wahrheiten aus Leibnitz, inHerder und die Anthropologie, 36. Cf. Leibniz,New Essays on HumanUnderstanding, ed. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 56.62
Faculty without act, mere capacities are nothing but fantasies which nature does not know where does one
find in the world a faculty without act? always a disposition to a tendency to an act. See Herder, Wahrheiten,46. Cf. Leibniz,New Essays, 110.63
Engraved characters can be obscured, but not erased. See Herder, Wahrheiten, 45, 34ff. Cf. Leibniz,NewEssays, 100. Herder notes later in the Treatise:Reflective awareness governs even in the most sensuous
condition, only less noticeably (130, translation modified). And he asks: is what is less noticeable thereforenonexistent? (131).64
Ibid., 86.
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years practice unless one simultaneously denies the growth of all forces of the soul
[]?65
Just as the capacity for reason develops and matures over the course of ones life, so too must
it have developed over the course of human history, in particular with the assistance of
spoken and written language, but while always being present and actual in some form
something Herder believes Rousseau denies. Moreover, to speak of a capacity for reason and
language being suddenly brought into actuality smacks of the kind of faculty psychology
Herder opposedreason is not an additionalpower. The human soul is one undivided power
and is characterized, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, by a disposition for
rationality from the very outset, even if its growth towards mature reason is gradual. This is
witnessed by the way the soul responds to the flooding of its sensesnot as an instinct-
driven animal whose soul-forces immediately zero in on what it is relevant for it, but rather in
search of characteristic marks by which to order the wealth of data.
The refutation of potential faculties aside, Herder demonstrates how Rousseaus
savage man in fact already possesses languageas inner language. The capacities Rousseau
gives to his savage show that he has graduated from the state of reflective awareness to that
of inner language: the savage, the solitary in the forest, would necessarily have invented
language for himself even if he had never spoken it, Herder claims.66 The evidence is to be
found in the faculty of perfectibility, which Rousseau links to development of all the others,
such as reason and language, but which is apparently dormant in the pure state of nature.67
Herder believes perfectibility is active in this state, in virtue of savage mans ability to learn
from animals68, and claims that Rousseau thereby refutes himself through his very own
words.69
And now what hasRousseau not conceded to this natural human being! More than wewant and need! The first thought Behold! That is something peculiar to the animal
The wolf howls! The bear roars! this is already (thought in such a light that it could
combine with the second thought, That is something I do not have!) actualreflection [Reflexion]. And now the third and fourth thoughts Fine! That would
65Ibid., 85.
66Ibid., 90.
67Rousseau,Discourse, 141, 159. I follow Victor Gourevitch in using pure state of nature to distinguish the
pre-social state of nature from the social one. See Gourevitch, Rousseaus Pure State of Nature,Interpretation16, no. 1 (1988): 23-59.68
Roger Masters is of the same opinion [see Roger Master, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1968), 150] while Victor Goldschmidt maintains that this serves only to elucidate
mans ability to raise himself to the level of animals instincts by giving it the name of perfectibility, whereas
none of the further developments of the latter, such as liberty, are apparent in this state. See Goldschmidt,Anthropologie et politique, 293ff.69
Herder, Treatise, 94.
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also accord with my nature! I could imitate that! I want to imitate that! Thereby my
species will become more perfect! what a mass of fine, inferentially connected
reflections!, since the creature that was able to consider only the first of thesenecessarily already had a language of the soul!, already possessed the art of thinking
which created the art of speaking. The ape always apes, but it has never imitated.70
The reflections Herder here puts in the mind of the savage are formulated as they are for
rhetorical effect, but the underlying point remains the same: reflection and language,
however primitive, are needed for imitationsomething no animal doesand are evidence
of the activity of rationality. Rousseau is thus wrong to claim that savage man is guided by
instinct alone, for not only does he have no such instinct, but his ability to learn from animals
clearly demonstrates a power transcending it.
The Framework of Natural Law
These criticisms of Rousseau are all made in Part I of the Treatise on Language,
which is primarily concerned with demonstrating how the human soul, through its own
forces, is capable of inventing language. The stronger point, that the human soul must
necessarily invent language, is also present, but it is really in Part II that Herder turns his full
attention to it. The title of Part II reads, In what way the human being most easily could and
had to invent language and was a treatment of the second part of the prize question: And by
what means will they [i.e., men abandoned to their natural faculties] arrive at this
invention?71
Herder here considers the historical side of the origin and development of
language and his analysis consists of a discussion of four natural laws governing it. We turn
first, however, to what Herder meant by natural law, an understanding of which is essential to
a proper grasp of both Part II and his philosophy of language as a whole.
In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau distinguishes between two
conceptions of natural law. The first is that of the Roman Jurists who construed it as a
Law which Nature imposes upon itself and which amounts to the expression of the
general relations established by nature among all animate beings, for their common
preservation.72 The second is a prescriptive conception of natural law as a rule prescribed
to a moral being73
, whose knowledge was secured through universal reason, and was
70Ibid., 95 (translation modified).
71
Ibid., 127 (translation modified).72Rousseau,Discourse, 126.
73Ibid.
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associated with the Moderns, in particular Grotius and Pufendorf.74 Rousseau rejects the
modern conception as it attributed to human beings capacities they could not possibly have
had in the state of nature, requiring that savage man be a very great reasoner and a profound
Metaphysician.75 Rousseau also rejects the very language of natural law since there are
two conditions for its existence which can not both be met: [a]ll we can very clearly see
about this Law is not only that for it to be law the will of him whom it obligates must be able
to submit to it knowingly; But also that for it to be natural it must speak immediately with the
voice of Nature.76
Rousseaus alternative is to propose two principles operating prior to
reason in the pure state of nature, namely, self-love and pity, which pre-reflectively guide
savage man.77
We shall turn to these principles and the question of natural sociability when we
discuss Herders Second Natural Law. With respect to Herders general conception of natural
law, however, he essentially shares Rousseaus opinion. He agrees that natural law cannot
consist in a prescriptive moral rule and that its operation cannot depend on its being
consciously followed.78 He thus also agrees that whatever guides human beings in the state of
nature must do so pre-reflectively. Unlike Rousseau, however, this does not lead Herder to
dispense with the terminology of natural law and speak only of principles or natural
right.79 For Herders conception of natural law extends far beyond the moral realm or even
the general relations among animate beings for their preservation. Like Rousseau, Herder
sees nature as the product of a divine creator. But unlike Rousseau, Herder has a metaphysics
informing his understanding of Gods creation that is laid out in several short writings from
the late 1760s and which informs his discussion in the Treatise on Language.80 Briefly, God
necessarily realizes himself through the actualization of all that is possible in the divine
74E.g., This then will appear a fundamental Law of Nature,Every Man ought, as far as in him lies, to promote
and preserve a peaceful Sociableness with others, agreeable to the main End and Disposition of Human Race in
General, Samuel Pufendorf, The Law of Nature and Nations, transl. Basil Kennet (London: Bonwicke et al,1749), 108.75
Rousseau,Discourse, 126.76
Ibid., 127.77
Ibid., 127, 152ff.78
While this is evident in the Treatise, in his early writings Herder repeatedly expresses the related view thatmost people are guided more by mores (Sitten) and moral feelings than by rules or principles, which he usuallycriticizes for their consequent inadequacy. See, e.g.,How Philosophy Can Become More Universal and Useful
for the Benefit of the People, in Herder,Philosophical Writings, 12-15.79
For discussion of Rousseaus preference for the term natural right over natural law, see Gourevitch,
Introduction, in Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings , ed. Gourevitch(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), x-xii.80
A detailed discussion of Herders metaphysics is beyond the scope of this essay. For analysis, see DeSouza,
Leibniz in the eighteenth century and the first-rate study by Marion Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus:Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik des jungen Herders (1763-1778) (Hamburg: FelixMeiner Verlag, 1994), esp. 81-101.
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thought in the form of the external physical universe, which becomes a natura operativa
endowed with forces through which it functions and unfolds.81 It was Kants hypothesis in
his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) of the orderly development
of a divinely created physical universe, according to the necessary operation in matter of the
Newtonian forces of attraction and repulsion and the laws of motion to which they gave rise,
that left its greatest mark on Herders conception of nature.82 Drawing on Leibnizs
conception of the soul, but suitably modified to allow for genuine intermonadic
communication and hence soul-body interaction, Herder construed the soul as endowed with
forces through which it first constructed a physical body for itself (attraction and repulsion),
secured nourishment for that body (expansion and contraction of living fibres), and
sensuously interacted with the external world via its five senses and their media (light, sound,
etc).83 Herder draws an analogy between the soul and God according to which it is only
through the external body it is driven to build for itself that the soul fully realizes itself,
engaging with the external world and developing its forces.
Part I of his Treatise is a further contribution to this theory of the human soul insofar
as it attempts to prove how, given the very structure of its forces, it cannot but develop in
such a way that leads to its inventing language, something indeed each child does every time
it is taught language.84 Part II of the Treatise attempts to show how the original invention
came about historically: just as the physical universe itself is the product of matter endowed
with forces of attraction and repulsion moving according to laws of motion, so too does a
soul, or rather many interacting souls, endowed with forces necessarily produce, according to
the natural laws which emerge from these forces, not just language, but also society and
culture. In postulating divinely endowed soul-forces, Herders starting point is thus
inescapably (and, for the later critical Kant, dogmatically) metaphysical; however, his real
objective is, on this basis, to provide a plausible naturalistic and developmental account
81Herder, Grundstze der Philosophie, inHerder und die Anthropologie, 52-4.
82See Grundstze, 53-54; Gesetze der Welt: Gesetze der Krper, in Herder,Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769.
Pdagogische Schriften, ed. Rainer Wisbert (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1997), 222. Kant,Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, inKants Werke, ed. Kniglich preuischen Akademieder Wissenschaften (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968), vol. I, 225-26, 234. Herder also took from Kant the non-moral
dependency of these laws on God, i.e., their absolute necessity concomitant with the creation of matter (227).
Cf. Kant,Der einzig mgliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Dasein Gottes, inKants Werke, vol. 2,99-100.83
Grundstze, 54; Gesetze der Welt, 222;Plato sagte: da unser Lernen blo Erinnerung sei in Heinz,
Sensualistischer Idealismus, 175-79.84Parents never teach their children language without the children constantly inventing it as well. See Herder,
Treatise, 92.
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which effectively makes manifests an immanent natural purposiveness.85 The First Natural
Law reads as follows: The human being is a freely thinking, active being, whose forces
operate forth progressively; thus is he a creature of language!86 The first quality Herder
mentions here is the free-thinking nature of humans. This harks back to his discussion of the
particular organization of human soul-forces that are not limited in any way, unlike those of
animals. Rousseau too endows his savage man with a capacity for freedom, but it is not
initially realized in the pure state of nature, for savage man is not yet conscious of his
freedom. As a result, he remains tethered to an instinct capable of refining itself by learning
from the instincts of other animals, until that concatenation of foreign causes will conspire to
set his faculty of perfectibility in motion and bring about the development of reason,
language, and society. We have already considered Herders critique of these ideas. What is
important here, however, is first, that Herders conception of human freedom in its first
manifestation is an objective state of the individuals soul resulting from its structure and has
nothing to do with any subjective awareness of ones freedom. In this it is like Rousseaus.
But even more important is that, second, this structural freedom of the soul does not have to
become self-conscious freedom to have real consequences (as Herder shows is the case with
Rousseaus perfectible savage man). Rather, this very freedom is the necessary precondition
of the invention of human language. The lack of determinacy of human soul-forces must be
seen in its proper context for its genuine purpose to be discovered. For as Herder notes in the
preamble to Part II, Nature gives no forces in vain.87
Inner Language and misericordia
The elucidation of this context is the objective of Herders discussion of the First
Natural Law. Herders portrait of the human being in the state of nature (a term he never uses
but the idea of which he is clearly implying) is the familiar one ofmisericordia from the
modern natural law tradition, especially Pufendorf, and which he had invoked in Part I. Here,
Herder explores the dynamics of the predicament. In a word, need is the catalyst for the
progressive operating forth of the soul-forces referred to in the First Natural Law.
Ifunderstandingand reflective awareness is the natural gift of his kind, this had toexpress itself immediately when the weaker sensuality and all the poverty of his lacks
expressed itself. The instinctless, miserable creature which came from natures hands
85
I owe this clarification and its formulation to the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewer.86Ibid., 127 (translation modified).
87Ibid.
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so abandoned was also from the first moment on the freely active, rationalcreaturewhich was destined to help itself, and inevitably had the ability to do so.88
Just as Rousseau had seen it as thanks to a very wise Providence that savage mans
potential faculties were initially dormant, Herder sees the very same providence behind the
dialectic of need and development in the human soul operating from the outset. While the
condition ofmisericordia was the general catalyst, the flooding of the senses with data from
the external world was the particular one that activated the sensorium commune and set the
soul in search of that characteristic mark that would be the first moment of reflection [and]
the moment for the inward emergence of language.89 As Herder puts it, [t]he whole of
nature storms at the human being in order to develop his senses until he is a human being. 90
Herder also reflects something of Rousseaus favourable portrayal of savage man when he
argues that it was in fact only the human being as it first emerged from the hands of nature,
fresh and vigorous and, most importantly, with its undivided soul and undeveloped forces (as
opposed to the specialized, weakened forces of human beings in modern society with its
division of labour) that could ever have invented language.91 Even the lack of society and its
stimulations contributed to the process such that [the soul] stimulated itself all the more
mightily, gave itself all the activity of sensation and thought which it had to give itself in
view of the inner impulse and external demands [] There language was born with the
whole unfolding of the human forces.92 This was the tool through which nature had
compensated human beings for their lack of instinct, a tool commensurate with their needs
and those external demands in a way no instinct could be.93
The clearest demonstration of the sufficiency of language was to be found not in the
original act of reflection and inner word through which it was invented, but rather in its
subsequent development. Governing this development is what Herder calls a great law of
the natural order: the whole chain of conditions in the human soul is of such a kind that
each of them forms language further.94 The human being in the state of nature does not pick
out characteristic marks as isolated acts of reflection; rather, the acquisition of each belongs
to a process of learning and together they make up an interconnected collection.
88Ibid., 128 (translation modified).
89Ibid., 129, 128 (translation modified).
90Ibid., 129.
91Ibid., 129, 138.
92
Ibid., 138.93Ibid., 128.
94Ibid., 129.
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[The human being is] the most ignorant creature when he comes into the world, but
immediately he becomes natures apprentice in a way that no animal does; not only
does each day teach the next, but each minute of the day teaches the next, eachthought the next. It is an essential knack of his soul to learn nothing for this moment,
but to marshal everything either along with what it already knew or in readiness for
what it intends to link with it in the future. His soul hence takes into account the storewhich it has already collected or still intends to collect. And in this way the soul
becomes a force of steadily collecting. Such a chain continues on until death. [He is,]so to speak, never the whole human being; always in development, in progression, inthe process of perfection.
95
Herder gives examples of the kinds of things the characteristic marks of which the human
being would collect, by observation of animals or experience: edible kinds of food, types of
plants, the sounds of dangerous animals. They all develop and enrich its inner language, and
yet, as Herder highlights, it is only the life of a single human being!96
Language is thus theinstrument of the constant progress marking a single human lifeof the law of perfection
(Gesetz der Vervollkommung).97 It is here that Herders connection to the German
Aufklrung, whose religious and theological dimension was fundamental, can be most clearly
seen.98 Human beings, qua language creatures, are ineluctably called to perfect themselves,
thereby fulfilling Gods will and plan for them. The crucial difference, however, between
Herder and earlier Aufklrer such as Christian Wolff, for whom the principle of
Vervollkommung was paramount99, is that in Herders conception of human nature, the
process of perfection operates naturally, via the forces of the human soul and their unfolding,
rather than via the individuals rational knowledge and conscious following of a principle of
perfection.
Language and Sociability
This progress and learning does not come to an end with the life of the human being
in the state of nature, for just as the inner word is destined to become a word of
communication (Mitteilungswort), so does language become an instrument for education.100
95Ibid., 130.
96Ibid., 133.
97Ibid., 131 (translation modified).
98For discussion see Panajotis Kondylis,Die Aufklrung im Zeitalter des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002/1981), 537ff.99
Do what makes you and your condition, or that of others, more perfect; omit what makes it less perfect. See
Wolff, Vernnfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen, zu Befrderung Ihrer Glckseeligkeit(Frankfurt, 1720), 12.100
I thus disagree with Aarselffs interpretation that Herder makes language a silent, private, non-social
discourse of the mind. See Aarsleff, Herders Cartesian Ursprungvs. Condillacs ExpressivistEssai, inLanguage Philosophies and the Language Sciences, ed. Gambarara et al. (Mnster: Nodus, 1996), 171ff., 174;Jrgen Trabant develops a similar interpretation, see Trabant, Inner Bleating: Cognition and Communication in
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But in order to become this, Herder needs to account for what brings humans together, given
that his account of language has thus far consisted exclusively of its emergence within the
soul of a single human being. The Second Natural Law addresses this question: The human
being is in his destiny a creature of the herd, of society. Hence the progressive formation of a
language becomes natural, essential, necessary for him.101
Arguments for human beings
natural sociability would have been familiar to Herder, including those of Aristotle and
Grotius. Among his contemporaries, in a letter to Kant from 1768, Herder directly links his
overcoming of his early enthusiasm for Rousseau, and his concomitant acceptance of natural
sociability, to Hume, whom he calls in the truest sense of the term [] a philosopher of
human society.102 But Hume never actually examines natural sociability aside from
references to humans being necessarily born into a family-society103
and to the fellow-
feeling or benevolence that he recognizes as a principle in human nature.104 Herder also
considered Hume to be a bad metaphysician,105 largely because, unlike him, Herder was
committed, following Leibniz, to the need for speculative metaphysics to help uncover the
real world that informs the apparent one, as he puts it on repeated occasions. 106 Inspired by
Newton and Kants cosmogony, Herder wholeheartedly shared the eighteenth-century project
of a science of human nature (Hume) or an experimental physics of the soul
(DAlembert) and the attempt to explain the observable phenomena of human experience
according the operation of scientific principles or natural laws.107 But this attempt was for
Herder inseparable from the equivalent need for an underlying metaphysics accounting for
these principles and laws. It is for this reason that he turned to another thinker in his
the Language Origin Discussion,Herder Yearbook 2000, ed. Menges et al. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), here 9ff.These amount to distorted readings of Herder resulting from a failure to situate the origin of inner language of
Part I within the broader context of the Treatise. For inner language is only a preliminary step, ontogenetically(cf. note 82) and phylogenetically, in the development of language as we know it. And it is inseparable from the
analysis of Part II according to which language is an instrument of sociability and education central to the
survival and flourishing of the individual and species.101Herder, Treatise, 139.
102Herder,Briefe, vol. I, 119.
103Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 316; Hume,An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals , ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998) 88; Hume, Of the Origin of Government,Essays, moral, political, andliterary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolois: Liberty Fund, 1985), 37.104
Hume,Enquiry, 116; Appendix, 166.105
Herder, Review of James BeattiesEssay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition toSophistry and Scepticism, in Herder, Smtliche Werke, ed. Bernard Suphan, 33 vols (Berlin: Weidmann 1877-1913) vol. 5, 461.106
Herder, Wahrheiten aus Leibniz, 32; Herder,Phnomene des Wahren und Schnen, in Smtliche Werke, vol.8, 112.107
Hume,An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1999), 87; DAlembert,Preliminary Discourse to the Encylopedia of Diderot, ed. Richard Schwab(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), 84.
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discussion of natural sociability, who offered both a naturalistic account of it and who
situated it within the context of a providentially designed natural order. That thinker was
Shaftesbury.108
In the same letter to Kant in which he mentions Hume, Herder asks, But why do you
forget my beloved philosopher, in addition to your pair [i.e., Montaigne and Hume] the third
man? who has just as much social temperament, just as much human philosophy the friend
of our old Leibniz, who owed so much to him and who liked to read him so much [] in
short, the Earl of Shaftesbury.109 Herder had already noted in his Truths from Leibniz the
instinct for society which Leibniz attributed to humans,110 but in Shaftesbury he found the
kind of detailed discussion of the state of nature and natural sociability that resonated with
him. Beyond the textual evidence for Shaftesburys influence, discussed below, Herder also
made explicit reference in a letter to those ideas of Shaftesbury that were central to the
Treatise just as he was scrambling to complete it to send off to the Berlin Academy by
December 1770. Defending Shaftesbury against the charge of atheism made by the French
author Delisle de Sales, Herder writes,
Shaftesbury is for him an atheist, whom he constantly rails against without having
properly read him: but an atheist who preaches nothing so much as order, harmony,
highest wisdom in the structure of the whole world, who above all speaks of optimism
such that he touches the heart where Leibniz only speaks of it to the understanding,
indeed who finally conceived of the great system of virtue which was the greatesttriumph of providence this Atheist with his great world spirit (which for me is themost splendid name for God) is worth more to me than ten such petty masters of
philosophy.111
It is on Shaftesbury more than any other thinker that Herder depends for his conception of
providence and the image of the great household of nature (Haushaltung der Natur) which
returns on numerous occasions throughout the Treatise.112
In The Moralists, Shaftesbury speaks of nature along these lines, through the
character of Theocles, as evidence of the providential design behind its autonomous
operation: Such then [] is the admirable Distribution of NATURE, her adapting and
adjusting not only the StufforMatterto the Shape andForm, and even the Shape it-self and
108The importance of Shaftesbury for Herders conception of sociability in the Treatise has not been fully
recognized in the secondary literature. Cf. Pross, Kommentar, in Herder,Abhandlung, 131 and Neis,Anthropologie, 425 who provide only brief discussions.109
Herder,Briefe, vol. I, 119.110
Herder, Wahrheiten aus Leibnitz, 43; cf. Leibniz,New Essays, 93.111
Herder,Briefe, vol. I, 217 (12 September 1770).112
Ulrich Gaiers insightful discussion of the religious dimension of the Treatise mentions only Kant (of theAllgemeine Naturgeschichte) among the philosophical sources of HerdersHaushaltung der Natur. See Gaier,Herders Sprachphilosophie, 141-43.
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Form to the Circumstance, Place, Element orRegion; but also the Affections, Appetites,
Sensations, mutually to each other, as well as to the Matter, Form, Action, and all
besides.113 In response to a question from Philocles with respect to why animals, but not
humans, have instinct, Theocles is able to provide an example of this distribution of nature
in action. Whereas the young of most animals immediately have some degree of self-
sufficiency, the human infant is the most helpless, weak, infirm. He continues,
Where is the loss in such a Species? Or what is Man the worse for this Defect, amidstsuch large Supplies? Does not this Defectengage him the more strongly to Society,and force him to own that he is purposely, and not by accident, made rational and
sociable; and can not otherwise increase or subsist, than in thatsocialIntercourse andCommunity which is his natural State? Is not both conjugal Affection, and naturalAffection to Parents, Duty to Magistrates, Love of a common City, Community, or
Country, with the other Dutys and social Parts of Life, deducd from hence, and
founded in these very Wants? What can be happier than such a Deficiency, as is theoccasion of so much Good?114
The central lesson Herder drew from these ideas was that nature realized its objectives
through human needs, and that natural sociability was an outcome of them. We have already
seen how the dialectic of need and development operates in the invention of language. In his
discussion of the Second Natural Law, Herder shows how need or Defect works to develop
not just the human beings rationality (Vernunftmigkeit), but also his socially affective
nature.
Herder turns to the subject of human reproduction upon enunciating his second law,
adducing the relevant facts: females have no season of heat, male reproductive force is
constantthe same ones Rousseau uses to justify the sufficiency of chance encounters
between the sexes for the survival of the species.115
Herder, however, asks why, if storks and
pigeons have marriages (Ehen), humans, for many more reasons too, should not also.
Humans, as weaker, feebler, more naked creatures, also require caves for shelter. And, thanks
to causes linked to reproduction, Herder explains, these naturally become common caves.
116
Next, again referring to human weakness, Herder speaks of the social assistance the human
female requires when pregnant, in comparison to the ostrich which can lay its eggs in the
desert. Finally, the human infant, which Herder refers to as a suckling, is very much a vassal
113Shaftesbury, The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions,
Times, ed. Douglas Den Uyl (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 172-73. See also p. 83 for the conception ofnature as an ordered whole.114
Ibid., 174.115Rousseau,Discourse, 156, 161.
116Herder, Treatise, 139.
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nature, the troublesome, vexing effort of his upbringing doubles the strivings of his
parents!123
Human need is again the catalyst for human development. Following Shaftesbury, Herder
asserts, nature [] knows how to make strength out of weakness in the whole of the
species.124 Not only was the subjectively felt need of the individual human being a catalyst
for the development of language, but the objectively felt needs of others also become a
catalyst for the emergence of those affections and feelings which are the basis of natural
sociability. The capacity for pity that Rousseau gives to savage man necessarily entails the
capacity for parental affection and hence sociability.125 In the words of Shaftesbury, if
natural Affection and the Care and Nurture of the Offspring be natural, Things standing as
they do with Man, and the Creature being of that Form and Constitution he now is: it follows,
That Society must be also natural to him; And That out of Society and Community he
neverdid, nor evercan subsist.126 In sum, the forces of the human soul, catalyzed by need,
unfold both the rationality and language and the affectively rooted sociability which are in
turn the basis of human society and culture.
In the remainder of the Treatise, Herder explores how language fulfills its destiny in
becoming not just a tool of the progress of the individual, but also a tool of the education of
ones children. Language becomes the storehouse of human beings knowledge, which is
continually transmitted, building an edifice that continues to grow and to bring about human
development and progress in a way that contrasts with the bee that builds its hive today in the
way it always has and will. Herder explores how from one original language many are
formed (Third Natural Law) and how all languages together constitute a chain of the
education (Bildung) of humanity (Fourth Natural Law). These later discussions are of great
interest and significance and have not yet been accorded the scholarly attention they deserve.
While I do not have the space to give them their due here, I will, by way of conclusion,
outline one that is highly relevant to our concerns in this paper.
123Ibid. In the Grundstze der Philosophie (1769) Herder also defends natural sociability, opposing it to
Rousseaus natural man [Naturmensch], but interestingly subordinating it to self-preservation[Selbsterhaltung], a view he abandons here, perhaps under Shaftesburys influence. See Grundstze, 230.124
Ibid.125
Herder notes Rousseau gives animals a feeling of tenderness towards offspring, but denies it to humans
(145). Cf. Rousseau,Discourse, 152. This contrasted not just with Shaftesbury, but with Hume also (who wasprobably echoing the former): Tenderness to their offspring, in all sensible beings, is commonly able alone to
counterbalance the strongest motives of self-love, and has no manner of dependence on that affection,Enquiryconcerning the Principles of Morals, 167.126
Shaftesbury, The Moralists, 179.
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Although Herder critically engages with Rousseau throughout his Treatise, he seems
insensitive to the fundamental political and social criticaldimension of Rousseaus discussion
of the pure state of nature. Herder did, to his credit, acknowledge this dimension in a letter to
Hamann from 1768 where he admitted that he could not unravel the problem in Rousseau of
humans advancing from the state of nature to the present evil of the world as a result of the
treasure of capacities and inclinations etc. in their nature. If, to secure their happiness, this
treasure was meant to remain locked up, Herder asks, why did God give [them] this seed of
straying [Irrsal]?127 For Herder, that human nature was intended by God to unfold itself was
clear, as he insists later in the letter and as we have seen in the Treatise.128 But in the
discussion of the Third Natural Law, and the multiplication of languages, Herder responds to
Rousseaus challenge. He rejects Rousseaus tracing of the wars that resulted in civil society
to the institution of property. Instead, he argues that it is the human capacity to form an
opposed nature, habit, and language that is the true origin of such wars.129 For the human in
the state of nature, having language, is no Rousseauian forest man, and having a family
language, is no Hobbesian wolf.130 And given these linguistic and social conditions,
interfamily disagreements can arise, spiral into conflicts and separations/migrations, and
ultimately engender deep-seated familial and national hatred while giving rise to new
languages. Herder rejects the thesis that property relations could be the source of the first
wars; humans at these early stages are far more concerned with family and tribal pride and
honour.131
Herders picture of human history is thus far from one of untainted progress and
social harmony. While he develops a trenchant critique of politics in his own day in other
works, bemoaning the culturally stultifying effects of absolutism,132 what is of interest in this
brief overview of his response to the political Rousseau is his closeness to him. Like
Rousseau, Herder rejects original sin, and like Rousseau, he sees the first human discord and
development of vices as instead the product of humans themselves. But while Herder thus
also agrees with Rousseau about humans natural goodness, this in no way tempts him to
127Herder,Briefe, vol. I, 97.
128Employing the image of the tree of knowledge, Herder writes, what good or bad is the tree of knowledge?
[] It is the risk which man took to extend himself beyond his limits, to gather knowledge, to enjoy strange
fruit, to imitate other creatures, to raise his reason, and to want to be himself a collection ofallinstincts, allabilities, allforms of enjoyment, to be like God (no longer an animal) and to know. Herder,Briefe, vol. I, 98.129
Herder, Treatise, 151.130
Ibid.131
Ibid., 152.132
See esp. Herder,Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, in Herder, Schriften zu
Philosophie, Literatur, Kunst und Altertum 1774-1787, ed. Jrgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher (Frankfurt:Deutscher Klassiker Verlag) 9-107;but also the remarkable fragment Gedanken bei Lesung Montesquieus, inHerder,Journal meiner Reiseim Jahr 1769. Pdagogische Schriften, 204-08.
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